A typical prior art disk drive system 10 is illustrated in FIG. 1. In operation the magnetic transducer 20 is supported by the suspension 13 as it flies above the disk 16. The magnetic transducer 20, usually called a “head” or “slider,” is composed of elements that perform the task of writing magnetic transitions (the write head 23) and reading the magnetic transitions (the read head 12). The electrical signals to and from the read and write heads 12, 23 travel along conductive paths (leads) 14 which are attached to or embedded in the suspension 13. The magnetic transducer 20 is positioned over points at varying radial distances from the center of the disk 16 to read and write circular tracks (not shown). The disk 16 is attached to a spindle 18 that is driven by a spindle motor 24 to rotate the disk 16. The disk 16 comprises a substrate 26 on which a plurality of thin films 21 are deposited. The thin films 21 include ferromagnetic material in which the write head 23 records the magnetic transitions in which information is encoded.
Media typically has several parameters which indicate the media performance. The parameters include orientation ratio (OR), signal to noise ratio (SNR), magnetic moment (Mrt), soft error rate (SER), and energy barrier for magnetic switching (KuV/kT). As these parameters typically have trade-offs between each other, it is important to create media which tunes these parameters to improve the overall performance of the media.
What is needed are media with various thin film layers that optimize media structure to improve the overall performance of the media through tuning of the parameters.